As I See It Cover

As I See It

A series of columns written from 2007 – 2011 about being gay and Christian written for the RUM-NC newsletter
by John Suddath

As I See It (10/9/08)

Our Disciples III Bible study has been reading the prophets starting with Lamentations. We’ve gotten as far as Hosea, and the readings seem to fit the gloom and doom of the current economic news. We’re sending soldiers to die in Baghdad, but at least our entire nation hasn’t been shipped off into exile as the Jews faced during that period of the Hebrew Bible. What parallels can we draw between our “sins” and those of Israel and Judah, and is God punishing us? I think that’s a gross oversimplification of the problems we are facing that are due to well documented examples of greed and speculation run amok, and I’m not sure there is a religious connotation to our current crises even though our leaders have spoken of saving the world for democracy. We have a lot of false prophets today just as they did 2,500 years ago.

Read more: As I See It...

I attended the 2nd Annual Equality Conference at Duke on the 15th along with about 300 others at the Bryan Student Center. The sessions ran from 9 am to 5 pm with two plenary sessions and three breakout sessions. Five options were offered at each breakout sessions, and I went to the groups on Aging in the LGBT Community, Growing Up Gay in America, and PFLAG. The aging group was led by a policy analyst at the NGLTF who presented a lot of statistics about gays as they age. The session on Growing up Gay included Mitchell Gold, who talked about his book CRISIS (the stories of 40 gay Americans); Brent Childers, the director of Faith in America; and Matt Comer, the editor of Q-Notes, the LGBT newspaper of the Carolinas (who didn’t look as though he was quite grown up yet). The PFLAG presentation was by Neena Mabe, from Winston-Salem PFLAG (and a member of Green St. UMC), Andrea Angelo (also from Winston-Salem), and Spencer Duin from Asheville PFLAG.

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The media have played up the reaction of the GLBT community to the announcement that Rick Warren will give the invocation at Obama’s inauguration next week. Gene Robinson was interviewed yesterday in response to the announcement that he will give the invocation at the Lincoln Memorial Ceremonies. The cynics say that he was a political response to the pressure of the GLBT community. I say that this attitude of dividedness that our country has experienced the past eight years has hardened us so that we find it difficult to accept a person at his word that he wants to be inclusive and accepting of a broad range of people who disagree with each other. Obama’s cabinet appointments certainly have reflected that philosophy.

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In 1967 my partner was in the last year of Perkins Divinity School at Southern Methodist University and was considering of how and where to apply for full inclusion into the active ministry into the church. Upon the advice of one of his clergy friends who was in full connection to the church, he decided to disavow his seminary training and not proceed with the procedures specified because of the fact that he recently had come to understand the fact that he was gay and all of the implications that would portend to his becoming an effective pastor. He left the Methodist Church for the Presbyterian Church and eventually ended up at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, where he actively participates in the worship service very week and leads a circle of friends in weekly study. In other words, he became a lay minister rather than face the hypocrisy of being a closeted clergy.

Read more: My Story (1/24/09)